


I Won't Ever Be A Brother In Arms

by gala_apples



Series: An Alphabet of Teen Wolf Crossovers [19]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), Todd and the Book of Pure Evil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Temporary Character Death, Trans Female Character, Transphobia, Werewolf Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3790555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Argent hunters are matriarchal. This occasionally makes Allison's life more difficult than it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Won't Ever Be A Brother In Arms

**Author's Note:**

> When I did my Todd research I found the name of the school, but not the name of the town, (and I didn't want to put Winnipeg just because it was filmed there) so I just called it Deborah Falls. If there are any Todd readers who know the canon better than I do, let me know and I'll edit.

Allison finds out about the Argent duty when she’s eleven. 

She knows something’s the matter because everyone didn’t meet up for Thanksgiving. But even her best sneaking around hasn’t been enough to find out exactly what the problem is. All she knows is that her mom and dad are really mad at Grandpa and they keep having arguments on the phone with her aunts and uncles. She’s pretty sure it’s not about her injections. She started having them way before Thanksgiving. Plus everyone was nice when she said she wanted to be called Allison, not Edward, and almost everyone tries.

She doesn’t figure it out herself. Mom and Dad call her into the living room and tell her to sit down, that they’re ready to share something with her.

“We’re going to be honest with you, okay?”

Allison nods. The Argents are always honest. It’s like their motto.

The monsters are real conversation is shocking, but it’s the next part that really gets her. Hunter families are matriarchal. Even in cases of marrying in.

“So Dad does what you say?”

“In battle he does,” Mom says cooly. Allison doesn’t really need to think about it. It fits the way things work. Like, so much so that it was sort of a dumb question. 

“The problem is at the age you should start training.”

Dad shakes his head. “That’s not true. Gerard wants you to start training. Kate, Jasper, some of the others. Each branch has their own method.”

Allison crosses her arms. Some of her cousins being ridiculously into mythology is starting to make sense. “Is that why Kelly still believes in mermaids? Are there mermaids? Are they bad?”

“Your father wanted to shelter you from it all.”

“That’s why you’re mad at everyone?”

“Not quite.”

They both look uncomfortable and all of a sudden it clicks. “They don’t think I’m part of the matriarchy. Do they?”

“We thought they understood.”

Her mother goes frostbitten. “They will understand. You will be in the running.”

Allison waits for one of them to say unless you don’t want to be. They don’t say it.

***

When Allison’s twelve she gets kidnapped.

It starts with a dream. She’s playing tennis against a giant butterfly using its wings as a racket when a bee stings her in the throat. The butterfly says if Allison wants it’ll tear a wing off and she can use it and win the game, but she needs to let the centipedes cocoon in her skirt as repayment. That’s when Allison wakes up. 

Two things battle for her attention. One: she’s tied to a chair. Two: her neck is throbbing. _Throbbing_. The panic she’s feeling about waking up somewhere not her bed keeps dipping under the physical discomfort. It’s part fishing for info, part wanting to feel better, that has Allison calling out for water five minutes later. Depending on how the kidnapper replies it’ll tell her if this is a hate crime or the training Dad’s been hedging about.

“There will be water when you get out.”

The voice that fills the room is from a handheld transceiver. As much as she cranes her head Allison can’t see where the walkie-talkie is, but there’s no mistaking that squawk. Even through the garbled sound Allison’s pretty sure it’s Kate. Training then. Good. She might get injured tonight but she won’t be brutalized or murdered. Also good; she probably got here via tranq gun, not getting knocked out. Shot in the neck has less long term effects than bruising her brain.

“You have one goal. Get out of the house. There are multiple ways. Each has it’s impediments. Figure it out.”

Momentarily ignoring the fact that she’s tied to the chair -if she considers that her primary problem she’ll get hasty- Allison scans the cavernous room as best as she can. There are three actual doors. There’s also what looks to be a patch of dry-rotted floorboards, and a beam that crosses the length of the ceiling. 

Floor or ceiling are her best bets. The doors will have obvious traps. Maybe they’re triggered to make tranq guns shoot. Maybe they’re guarded by hardened Hunters with tazers and fists. She’s not naive. Nor is she deaf to Kate’s scant advice. She knows the floor and ceiling both have their own traps beyond her current knowledge. But unknown problem X might still be easier to deal with than trying to dodge a blow dart.

There has to be a way to get up on the beam. Once she is there’s probably a blackened sky light, too dirty to be noticeable now. Allison’s spent her fair share of time in gymnastics class, she knows she has the balance to walk across a roof. Or if she doesn’t destroy the rope too badly she could break through the weak part of the floor and lower herself down. Maybe it’s the first floor underneath her. Maybe it’s the cellar. Either way it gets her closer to an exit.

*

“I’m going to kill Kate,” Dad says. He’s sitting on the wooden bench near the front door like he doesn’t care that it’s antique and entirely for show. Allison would put money down that he’s been sitting there since she was smuggled out of the house, despite Kate and Granda promising tonight would be their secret. So much for sneaking in.

“No, I’m fine,” Allison rushes to reply. Kate doesn’t deserve fury for orchestrating something Allison’s wanted for a year now. “It was great.”

“You know you’re bleeding?” It’s not panicked, it’s a statement of fact. Like how Mom would point out Allison’s plaid skirt doesn’t match her striped shirt.

“Yeah. A guy threw me into the wall and my skin broke.”

“A guy what?”

Allison shakes her head, still high on passing the first real test. “That’s not the best part. That’s the boring part.” Dad tries to interrupt her, but Allison’s not having it. She continues over him in a louder voice. “The best part was when I rigged this-”

“Allison! Were there a lot of guys? Did you have to fight more than once?”

She shrugs. “We took a Tae Bo unit in gym so I knew stuff. Even though you haven’t been teaching me.”

“We haven’t taught you for a reason. Escape and fight is the men’s test.”

“No,” Allison protests. All of her joy is draining out like there are holes in her feet. She starts to walk away from him before he can say anything more to ruin it. She just has to make it through the living room to the stairs and then she can lock her door and everything will be okay.

“Allie-”

She stomps her foot. It would be loud enough to wake the whole house up, if they weren’t already. Just because Mom delegated to Dad doesn’t mean she’s not awake in their bedroom. “I planned how to get out! Like Mom would!”

“The male line aren’t drones. We can think. We just mainly fight. If they made you fight... If they’d tested you properly there should have been a group you had to rally and deploy.”

“So they still-” Allison breaks off and throws the lamp into the wall so she doesn’t burst into tears. “I hate them. They’re so stupid. I hate Kate.”

“I know, baby.” Her dad looks like he wants to hug her. He doesn’t hug her. Allison knows it’s because he respects her too much to make her cry. Sometimes she’s so _grateful_ for the people her parents are.

“I’m not going to be their warrior.”

“One day you’ll be their queen. We’ll start teaching you strategy tomorrow.”

***

Allison is fourteen when she attends her worst school yet. It’s her second school this semester, and she’s read The Great Gatsby back to back, once at each school. Being able to recycle her essay is not worth having to answer the chapter assignments. The mind-numbing boredom should make English her least favourite class, but it’s not. It’s phys ed.

In other situations it wouldn’t be. Allison is fast. She’s agile. She has upper body strength, especially compared to the rest of her demographic. Gym class should be an easy A. Sucks for her she’s in this situation. Situation being, specifically, that phys ed is the worst because the gym teacher is a bigot. Possibly a perv. Allison wouldn’t be surprised. No adult is so obsessed with teenagers showering unless they care. Any amount of caring is too much in Allison’s stranger danger book. 

It’s an automatic zero for the day if you don’t -or can’t- shower. That includes boys with turbans, girls on their periods, and girls with unwanted dangling flesh. Allison can’t shower, not in the girl’s locker room. She doesn’t have solid proof that Mr Millens would declare her a boy and move her if the truth about her DMAB body came out but it seems likely. It also seems likely that the principal would back Mr Millens up, since he has so far with every other exception. So she participates in every class and every class gets a zero when she doesn’t come out of the locker room with wet hair. 

The whole situation bothers Allison, a lot, but she doesn’t complain. The second she does it’ll become a capital-I-Issue. Her parents will be all over it, and if there’s anything worse than being The Transgirl it’s being the girl whose parents bankrupt the school by sueing it. What she’s banking on is the chance she won’t finish out the semester here. Usually it’s between a semester and a school year per location, but not always. Her parents provide just enough stability so that family services is never called, but their wanderlust is nearly as insatiable as their craving for justice. If they leave she can just take phys ed in another city and her grade here doesn’t matter.

It’s the secretary that messes her up. Allison’s not expecting it, when she calls. If she had been she would have been smart enough to be the first to answer any phone call, change her inflection, and pretend she was indeed Mrs Argent. Instead Dad answers the call. And as it turns out, those zeros have translated into absences on her record. If Allison misses three more classes the entire semester she fails phys ed.

“What have you got to say for yourself?”

Allison hesitates. She goes as far as to swallow and adjust her hem before Mom’s piercing look makes it clear there will be no more stalling. “You don’t like excuses.”

“Does that mean you _have_ one? An excuse?”

Allison is still completely certain that this is going to become an Issue. It’s just short term the lesser evil when compared to having both of them furious with her for slacking so epically. “Showering is mandatory at this high school. I don’t trust what Mr Millens or Principal Byfuglien or even the school board would say if I asked to be exempt. There’s another kid in my class, a Sikh boy. He’s failing too.”

Dad takes it surprisingly well. “Okay. That’s...” he nods. “Sounds like you did the best you could with the situation you had. Keep on with the strategy you’ve devised. Participate to keep your fitness level normal, even if Millens won’t give you the grade you deserve. Letting them get you out of shape is giving them the final win. We’ll be out of Luxom before final grades. You can do phys ed again next semester.”

“We’ll be out of Luxom by the weekend.”

Dad turns to look at his wife, his often-times commander. Allison’s only seen this expression once or twice, but she knows it for what it is; a confused soldier who doesn’t understand his orders. Unlike the actual army though, Dad can’t get in trouble for questioning them. “We haven’t found the Alpha yet.”

Mom gets icy all over. “Let this transphobic town be ripped to shreds. We are done, Chris. Tonight.”

***

Allison is fifteen when she overhears some of her classmates talk about something obviously supernatural. Allison isn’t stupid. She knows her parents move exclusively to places that need help. Somewhere in Deborah Falls should be werewolves, and why not at the high school? Surely not all werewolves are adults. There must be elderly wolves, child wolves, teen wolves.

Except that’s not what the prosthetic hand kid and the nerdy girl and the hot bi girl and the stoner are talking about. Nothing about mutilated bodies, or people who are too fast or can hear things from too far away. Instead it’s stuff like ghost possession and homunculuses and something about giant penis monsters. Frankly Allison’s glad she missed that one. She has enough unwanted penis problems.

If Allison was younger this would be the moment when she runs to her parents and points out all the suspicious things that she’s noticed. The problem with that is giving the worm to the bigger fish is very much a male hunter move. The last thing Allison wants to do is prove her estranged family right, even if they never get a chance to find out. If she wants to prove her ability as a future matriarch the only possible move is to do her own research. There’s even a possibility she’ll figure it out before Mom. As far as Allison knows her parents are still looking for the cult rumoured to be in Deborah Falls. They haven’t heard about the penis monster or the zombies.

There are a lot of books to read through. Between family lore, potential articles of interest printed off the internet, and the oddly large amount of books on the supernatural the school has, Allison’s got stacks of info completely covering the library table. She even has a blueprint of Crowley High with different colours of sticky dots in case location of events matters. Hopefully it’s not crucial though because she doesn’t actually know any of it for fact, just what she’s heard. It’s difficult to make friends you can interrogate without being side eyed when you know how soon you’re going to be leaving.

 _If I’d been born a girl I wouldn’t have to do this._

It’s an ugly thought, but it’s true. If Allison was cis she could have mixed gender traits and have her body to fall back on as ultimate proof. As it is she feels like she constantly has to prove she’s not a guy. Sucks for her that guys get to do the fun mindless slaughter of enemies, and women have to strategize how said slaughter will go down. She tries to ignore the inner whisper of dysphoria. It’s not helping her get her task done, and if she doesn’t get it done today she’ll have to skip more classes tomorrow. Better to not think, just read. 

Two skimmed books later Allison’s even more frustrated. This is boring and awful and everything sucks. Allison groans and thunks her head onto the leatherbound book in front of her. “If I’d been born a girl I wouldn’t have to do this.”

***

Allison is eighteen when the Nemeton infects her. It doesn’t make it better to know this is the bed she made, and she’d choose to lie in it again for her father’s sake. It doesn’t make it better to know she’s not alone, Stiles is having night terrors and Scott’s having trouble controlling his shift. The hallucinations are terrifying. And worse, they’re making her unsteady. She nearly kills Isaac and Lydia both with hands unable to handle weapons anymore.

Of course it doesn’t stop there. Why would fate only hand her insanity and uselessness on a silver platter when there is so much more fun to be had? 

The nogitsune wormed through the Nemeton decades ago to plant its fireflies. They hatch in Stiles. Allison can’t hate him for what comes next. Not knowing that it just as easily could have been her or Scott. It’s a bit easier to hate Mrs Yukimura but she tries to reign that in too. 

There’s no question that she’s scared. She’s been petrified for weeks. Hell, she cried on Sheriff Stilinski, thankfully an incredibly rare phenomenon. But fear or not, there’s really only one option when the nogitsune crawls from Stiles’ body and kidnaps Lydia. Not only does her hunter vow demand it, her personal feelings do too. Lydia’s been the best friend she’s ever had.

Allison is eighteen when she dies. It’s terrifying to not know what’s going to happen next. It’s upsetting to know she won’t get to say goodbye to her dad, or get another hug from the Sheriff, or ever see Stiles’ face happy and bumbling and perfectly unevil. And it’s worth it. The last question she asks is if they found Lydia, is if she’s safe. And she is. Her last plan ever, her most important ever, a success. It’s as much as Allison can ask for.

***

Allison is fifteen when she pisses herself at school. It’s the second thing she notices when she wakes up in the library. The only thing that comes before the acrid stench of pee is how hungry she is.

Her embarrassment at napping so hard she slept through the urge to go to the bathroom doubles when she notices there are people in the library. Around her table, actually. Definitely close enough to smell her. It’s the same group of four she overheard before; the prosthetic hand kid, the hot bi girl and the two others in their group. It’s by far the most shameful thing Allison’s ever been through. At the same time, their presence gives her room for solutions. Every supposed problem has variables that can be manipulated- that’s something her mom taught her early, even before the whole hunter bomb dropped.

“Anyone have a snack? I feel like I’m starving.” She can deal with the piss thing after she stops feeling like she might fall over if she stands up.

“You literally were,” the nerdy girl starts to explain. Allison thinks her name might be Hannah. “You’ve been sitting here almost three days. In less than one more you would have dehydrated to death.”

“A few _days_? Are you joking?”

“The book got you.”

“From what we can tell you got stuck in the daydream of a better life.”

Allison frowns. If Crowley High’s problem is a book that grants wishes -and it seems likely, probably all of the odd occurrences can be explained away by one wish or another- then it must have heard her complain about not being DFAB. Assuming that her dream was a realistic representation of what it would have been like, not just her brain creating nonsense, ‘better’ is debatable. Cisgirl her didn’t even figure out that werewolves existed until her boyfriend was one. That’s pretty sad.

“You know, it kind of wasn’t? I died. And my mom died. And the friends I had were always scared. Seeing Kate die was satisfying though. I’d watch that as a rerun.”

Prosthetic guy seems a bit frightened of the admission. “Congrats, I guess? On your good imagination?”

“So what did you do with the book that ensnared me?” Best she take it home and see if either of her parents know what to do with it.

“It flew away.”

“Literally. The Book of Pure Evil flies. Sorry.” The stoner shrugs, and the stretched collar of his black-washed-to-grey t-shirt shifts halfway to his collarbone.

She rolls her eyes. From rumor alone Allison knows of about thirty separate events the book has caused. At some point the obvious really should have occurred to them. “So capture it?”

“We’ve tried. We can’t.”

“It’s like... evasive.”

Allison sighs. It’s part annoyance, part happiness. Yes, everyone is astonishingly incompetent, but at least now she has a goal. Deborah Falls will be the first city in which she gets shit done herself. Like how Mom would. Like the matriarch would.


End file.
